Municipalities were left waiting for parochial revenue funds that never came

Then Scrambled to Clean Drains as Melissa Arrived, Neita Garvey Revealed

Municipal corporations across Jamaica were unable to clean parish drains before Hurricane Melissa struck because the Government failed to release promised Parochial Revenue Fund payments on time, forcing parishes to scramble during the storm itself, Opposition Spokesperson on Local Government and Participatory Democracy Natalie Neita-Garvey revealed during her sectoral contribution in Parliament on Wednesday.

The Opposition Spokesperson disclosed that municipalities had been specifically promised Parochial Revenue Fund drawdowns to finance pre-hurricane drain-cleaning projects. Several municipal corporations received no funds at all. As a result, the critical maintenance work that should have been completed in the weeks before Melissa was instead being rushed as the storm approached, leaving communities unnecessarily exposed to flooding and infrastructure damage.

“Municipalities were not unprepared because they lacked the will to act. They were unprepared because this Government made promises that it did not keep. Drain cleaning is not an optional service. It is the frontline of flood prevention. When you starve a municipal corporation of its promised funds and then a hurricane floods communities that could have been protected, you do not get to call that a natural disaster alone. Part of it is a governance failure,” stated Natalie Neita-Garvey, MP, Opposition Spokesperson on Local Government and Participatory Democracy

MP Neita-Garvey noted that the broader financial dependency of municipal corporations on ministerial permission to function is a structural failure that the reforms of 2016 were designed to address. Three critical Acts were passed in Parliament that year to establish a new local government financing framework. Nearly a decade later, no regulations have been brought to Parliament to give those Acts full effect, leaving the system operating under the same chronic dependency the legislation was meant to end.

With the 2026 hurricane season now underway, she called on Minister McKenzie to confirm in Parliament which municipal corporations have received their Parochial Revenue Fund allocations, which have not, and what the Government’s plan is to ensure no parish enters the peak of the season financially unprepared to protect its communities.